7/23/08

To commemorate the 15 year anniversary ATO reissue of the had-been-out-of-print Exile In Guyville, Liz Phair recently announced a second round of shows that will feature a beginning-to-end performance of the album.

In celebration of the 15th year anniversary of the groundbreaking album Exile in Guyville and its reissue by ATO Records, Liz Phair will perform the entire album at three engagements: August 27 at Theater of the Living Arts in Philadelphia; August 28 at 9:30 Club in Washington DC; and August 29 at The Paradise in Boston. Tickets go on sale Wednesday, July 23 via Ticketmaster.

These three additional shows come on the heels of four hugely successful sold out June events - two in New York City and one in each San Francisco and Chicago. Said Jon Pareles of The New York Times in his recent review of one of Phair's Exile in Guyville shows, "After 15 years of other people's indie-rock idiosyncrasies, "Exile" still holds up in all its conflicting impulses: its determination to be 'adamantly free' and its longing for someone to trust, its swagger and its pain." A modern classic, Pitchfork recently gave the album a 9.6 rating while both Rolling Stone and Blender gave Exile in Guyville a perfect score of five stars ("*****").

A few notes:

I never knew Exile In Guyville was written as a song-by-song response to Exile on Main St. before. I guess there really are things to be learned from press releases after all.

I'm sure he wasn't the first to do it, but the first guy I recall recently doing full-album performance of records that weren't by Pink Floyd was Ben Kweller a while back. This could be an ATO thing, then? Or maybe just coincidence. What am I, motivated to do research? If it were an ATO thing, though, It'd be rad to see Mike Doughty do all of Skittish.

Here are 5 other records I'd like to see performed in full (off the top of my head):